My Review of Basin Street Revue (1956) directed by Joseph Kohn

 I first watched this as a kid with my grandmother many years ago, and decided to give it a rewatch now. This was a very good variety show of multiple jazz and early R&B artists from the 1950. This was filmed at the Apollo Theater and the energy is classic of the venue. Among the music artists: Sarah Vaughan was obviously the highlight—though I did enjoy Amos Milburn’s performance as well. 

There were also non-music performances like the tap-dance performances and the vaudeville act of Nipsy Russell and Mantan Moreland (an act that was very common of the minstrel and vaudeville era). If you are interested in old-time entertainment then this is a good show to watch with some of the best artist from the generation change-over from jazz to R&B.

My Review of The Queen of Basketball (2021) directed by Ben Proudfoot

 With all the…”rage” over women’s basketball now, it can be easy to forget about the early days of women in the sport. Certainly in the pre-Title IX era when American women were given next to no support to participate in any kind of athletic competition. The late-Lucy Harris emerged as the dominate player in women’s basketball on the eve of Title IX and this documentary shined a light on her achievements and honored her before she passed away. It is a short documentary, but still a very good one and the best one I have seen produced by the NYT.

My Review of Grand Illusion (1937) directed by Jean Renoir

This film was Jean Renoir's first warning of the coming storm that was getting ready to be unleashed on the world (World War II). The film is about French prisoners of way being held (along with other Allied soldiers) during the First World War before the entry of the United States into the conflict. It details specifically a group of prisoners trying to escape. What the movie really does is capture Europe in transition between the old class-hierarchy of the 19th century and the new (and more nationally-motivated) class-structure of the 20th century (though even that had its beginning in the 19th century). While high-ranking officer POWs were treated almost like guest than enemy combatants, officers who were non-aristocrats or not as highly-ranked could expect no special treatment—though some are treated nicer by German guards who come from the same social-rank. 

While Renoir thought of WWI as "almost a gentlemen's war" and is very idealistic hopeful in this film overall, ho does not shy away from showing the class-stratification and casual bigotry of the soldiers. This is obvious in the treatment of the Jewish-French soldier Rosenthal who despite being from the French aristocracy, is still treated with casual antisemitism (one has to remember that WWI was barely a generation removed from the Dreyfus Affair (said Alfred Dreyfus would serve as an officer during the whole of WWI)). The treatment of the Colonial African-French officer is possibly worse as most of the other characters actively ignore him when he tries to talk to them. For all the talk of brotherhood by the prisoners, some barriers just ain't getting torn down. 

Jean Gabin does a great job in this movie to show why he was the white 1930s French equivalent of Denzel Washington and his character is every bit the hardness of the early 20th century as Eric von Stroheim's Prussian officer antagonist is of the 19th century and the old European aristocracy. While von Stroheim's politics were closer to Renoir's, the way he plays the head commander of the POW camps is an early proto-type of Christoph Waltz's character in Inglorious Bastards. The film's climax serves to emphasize the end of the prewar world and the beginning of the European interregnum. Many of the hopes that the soldiers had for peace would only last for 15 to 20 years. 

"War is a great illusion whose hopes are unfulfilled and promises never kept."

My Review of Festival (1967) directed by Murray Lerner

 This documentary/concert film marks the beginning of the era of Baby-Boomer concert film genre that ran into the mid-70s. This film shows the genesis of the popular image of the counterculture movement in the United States. It is based around the Newport Folk Festival between the years of 1963-1966. You have an assorted mix of Upper-Class New Englanders, Left-wing intellectuals, hipsters, and the beginning of the more drug-induced spin-off of the hipsters: the hippies. The editing of this film by Howard Alk points the way to the more extreme-styles of the Monterey Pop film of the following year, but we are not all the way there yet. It does give you a diverse, if uneven, sample of the music of the folk scene of the mid-1960s.

This may be one of the most diverse festival films—musically—of the era as you get not only "folk" music, but the Blues, Country, Bluegrass, Gospel, folk-rock and all the subgenres of those styles that were around at the time. I can appreciate that it had something for everyone and musicians who would not interact with each other anywhere else would meet at Newport, Rhode Island. Yes, a certain eccentric Minnesotan was the star attraction during this era in folk circles, but the film does try to balance him out and share equal time to performers who obvious were not as famous or worshipped. While this film can get lost after the concert films that came after it—it still is an interesting watch as a time capsule or as look at how much more political these functions were before the LSD started flowing.

My Review of I Was Born, But...(1932) directed by Yasujiro Ozu

 The most celebrated of Ozu's prewar comedies and it is one of his most pessimistic films. Two boys move with their dad to a new neighborhood and as they make their way up the social ladder, they learn that their dad is a lacky for his boss—who just happens to be the father of one of their new friends who they are fighting for top dog status with. The first part of the movie is a silly comedy where the two brothers really use all the crazy boys-tricks to deal with a bully and climb up their elementary school social circle. The second half is the more dark, bittersweet part of the movie where the boys realize the true nature of their father's position in the company where he works and it wakes them up to how the world of adults work and how what their daddy says and what he does can be so different.

This has the beginning of a lot of the Ozu trademark shots. We do have a lot more tracking shots and not every shot is three feet above the ground, but it is certainly being refined. We don't have the full on shots of every person talking yet, but it is getting close. Young Mitsuko Yoshikawa as the mom is very fine-looking.

My Review of A Straightforward Boy (1929) directed by Yasujiro Ozu

This is a 14 minute excerpt of Ozu’s first of his kids comedy films. It is basically his adaptation of the short story The Ransom of Red Chief by O. Henry. It plays into what you expect of the screwball comedies of the era and looks very unlike an Ozu film as we think of them today.

My Review of Malcolm X (1992) directed by Spike Lee

 Happy 100th Birthday to Omaha, Nebraska's own El-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz, better known to the world as Malcolm X. Few figures have become so influential without being able to be co-opted by the establishment—though it is not because folks haven't tried. James Baldwin details in his book The Devil Finds Work how Hollywood tried to get him to write a watered-down screenplay for an aborted adaptation of X's autobiography which thankfully Baldwin pulled out of. In 1991 Hollywood tried to do another adaptation with Norman Jewison at the helm, but Spike Lee caught wind of this and was able to take control of the project and make the greatest biographical film of all time and possibly Denzel Washington's greatest starring role.

This movie saw the last team-up of Spike Lee and his legendary cinematographer Eric Dickerson and it is their crowning achievement. All of the Lee/Dickerson signature shots are here in top form and all set pieces are absolutely beautiful. Nearly the whole 40 Acers stable of actors & crew. Ruth E. Carter wardrobe design is so accurate that you would've thought she was there. We get supporting actors like Delroy Lindo who has been keeping busy in 2025 is shows that he has been an expert character actor for a long time. Angela Basset plays Betty Shabazz like she was born for the role. Hell, even Spike Lee does a good job and shows why he is the best acting-director. But obviously there is one actor who shines above the rest...

Denzel Washington was no rookie before this film and this not his first Spike Lee film, but I still don't think any role he has played has been better and more important than this. Honestly, I don't know who else could've rise to the occasion to play this role other than Malcolm X himself. Quite a few people have played Malcom X in movies and television since Denzel, but none get the role as dead-on accurate as he does. He said that he spent hundreds of hours listening to as many speeches and footage of Malcolm that was available and it shows. I don't know of anyone in a film biography more take on a role so completely as Denzel Washington did and he truly makes me forget that I am watching an actor whenever I watch this movie.

I don't know what else is there to be said. Spike Lee made the best biographical film adapted from the greatest autobiography ever written. It is a three-act epic of the life of a man who has influenced countless people (including myself) into a more in-depth pride of themselves and their Blackness. I don't know what else to say but to quote from Ossie Davis' eulogy of him: 

"Malcolm was our manhood, our living, black manhood! This was his meaning to his people. And, in honoring him, we honor the best in ourselves...However we may have differed with him – or with each other about him and his value as a man – let his going from us serve only to bring us together, now."

My Review of Tokyo Story (1953) directed by Yasujiro Ozu

 When I tried to review Seven Samurai it was a nerve-wrecking undertaking because not only was it one of the greatest films of all time, but one of my personal top 5. While this is also a masterpiece film, I feel less pressure so I can critique a little easier. This film came early on in Ozu's legendary postwar run, but is rightly hailed as him at the height of his powers. He takes all the themes and feelings close to him and, with his top lieutenants Chishū Ryū and Setsuko Hara in top form (along with an incredible performance by Chieko Higashiyama), made his defining statement on life in modern Japan. I can't say it is a film I watch often, but it is one that sticks with you with its crushing sadness.

The generation conflict reaches its balance here. We get the look at both parents and children being mutually put-off by each other with the exception of the youngest daughter and war -widowed daughter-in-law. Besides them, all of the other kids come off as absolute villains. Of course, the father is also shown to not be a saint either (once again Chishū Ryū is playing a character way older than him). Hara as the daughter-in-law is a solider here—both for her in-laws in the movie and Ozu as an expert actress. Kyoko Kagawa (an actress who was an Akira Kurosawa/Kenji Mizoguchi main-stay) is used as the audience surrogate as the youngest daughter. She is the obvious future that this movie can maybe-optimistically point to.

Setsuko Hara in the foreground; Yasujiro Ozu at the far right.

I personally prefer the happier bittersweet film Early Summer (1951) when it comes to Ozu family dramas, but I can't deny the reason this is considered by the usual critics as one of the greatest films ever made. After watching The Only Son (1936) before re-watching this film and I am amazed at how much Ozu re-used some of the same locations shot-for-shot. Surprisingly, there is a panning shot in this film—though it is a short one as this movie has shaped what most people think of when they think about Ozu films. It is fairly melodramatic for an Ozu film, but it works in all the right ways. 

I doubt I will watch this film too many more times given how soul-crushing it is even when compared to other sad films, but I am glad to have watched it at least twice. 

My Review of The Only Son (1936) directed by Yasujiro Ozu

 Ozu's first sound film is a look at a family on the brink following The Great Depression. Despite the end of feudalism and the beginning of capitalism (and imperialism) in Japan following the Meiji Restoration—not everyone benefited equally as the modern class structure replaced the feudal one. We follow a poor single mother working in a factory to provide for her son all the way to his adulthood and the trials that the two deal with over the course of the film.

While the film begins during the Taishō era (1923) in a country village in the middle of Japan, it quickly time-skips to 1935 Tokyo in the middle of the Great Depression. The son has moved to Tokyo and got a job as a school teacher, but the Depression wiped out his earnings just as he became a husband and father. When his mother decides to visit him in Tokyo, she is shocked and (he ashamed) to see him and his family living in the ghetto in destitution. We spend the rest of the film watching both mom and son try to make sense of it all.

Being that this is an early Ozu film, things are a bit different from his post-WWII films. Form-wise, not only do we get tracking shots, but a full on fantasy/dream sequence at one point. Theme-wise, the big issue causing the conflict is not postwar Westernization, but the Depression itself. A lot of the generational conflict in Ozu's prewar films after 1929 comes from the economic down-turn.

The main appeal of this film is that it is the rare Ozu family drama where it is an adult son who is the focus rather than a daughter or child-son. He never did this again after the success of Late Spring (1949), but in the prewar films we get to see Ozu experiment a little. While the ending here does foreshadow the ending of Late Spring—it is made even more pitiful in hindsight knowing that our characters would not have a peaceful future, but a bloody one to look forward to.

My Review of Pickpocket (1959) directed by Robert Bresson

 I read Crime and Punishment back in 2012, but have seen its influence pop-up everywhere. I recently re-watched Le Havre (2011) whose police officer is borrowed from C&P. Of course one of the most famous adaptations of the novel is Pickpocket (1959). The protagonist Michel is as much an edgelord as C&P's Raskolnikov, but with the trademark emotional detachment that of Robert Bresson's "models" (his term for actors). Michel's god-complex inspires him to become a pickpocketer. The antagonist here—like in C&P—is a detective whose character is a one-to-one adaptation of Dostoevsky's Porfirey and he is always a step ahead of Michel while trying to convince him to give-up his life of crime. Michel's love interest Jeanne is a marked improvement on C&P's Sonia as she can counterbalance Michel without trying to aggressively confront him and she makes up for Michel's lack of humanity. 

The cameo scene of the real-life pickpocket-turned-sleight-of-hand artist Henri Kassagi is my favorite part of the whole movie. Kassagi's character teaches Michel how to pickpocket more effectively and they later team-up with another accomplice to pull more daring pickpocket operations. This features half the background music in the entire film (another trademark of Bresson).

This is one of, if not the most critically acclaimed of Bresson's films and it really is him as he reached the height of his powers. It is the full introduction to 60s Bresson and is the lead-in for the French New Wave that would start right after this movie was released. While I still hold The Trial of Joan of Arc (1962) as my favorite Bresson film, this is still an incredible movie that influenced so many movies after it (and not just Paul Schrader's).

My Review of Through the Olive Trees (1994) directed by Abbas Kiarostami

 This is Abbas Kiarostami-ception reaching its peak as at one point we see the actor who played Kiarostami in And Life Goes On (1992) being directed by another actor who is playing "current" Kiarostami in Through The Olive Trees (1994), who are both being directed by the actual Kiarostami
(who makes a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo in the movie). This is some peak-Iranian New Wave. This movie is our finale of the Koker Trilogy and takes us behind the scenes of the interpersonal drama happening during the filming of And Life Goes On (1992).

This big contention is that two of the actors in one scene of ALGO were involved in a dispute where the guy—Hossein Rezai (what is it with Kiarostami and dudes named Hossein?)—wants to marry the girl—Taherah Landanian—playing his wife, but her family is firmly against it. This causes problems for for Kiarostami as she is ordered not to talk to Rezai and this brings filming to a halt. Such a story would be a sub-plot for in most films, but is the main thrust of this film. Hossein Rezai is a traicomic character in the style of that other Kiarostami-Hossein: Hossein Sabzain of Close Up (1990). While Sabzain's unrequited love was cinema itself, Rezai's unrequited love is Tahereh who is a bit naïve and vain and not average from what we see of her—yet Rezai really keeps you rooting for him, however hopeless his quest feels The open-ended ending reinforces that it was the journey, not the destination, that this film is highlighting as we bring our journey through Koker, Iran to a close.

And touching back on that, through-out this film we have had Babak Ahmadpour and his brother as side characters. Babak starred in the first film of the Koker Trilogy and the search to find out if he was alive after the 1990 earthquake in Koker was the whole reason for the second film in the trilogy. After confirming that he is still alive in the first 15 minutes of this film, the overall-plot moves on from him rather seamlessly and you would not know how important he was to Kiarostami's canon if this was the only film in the trilogy you had watched. Life Goes On, indeed!

My Review of American Fiction (2023) directed by Cord Jefferson

 I am so glad to finally be able  to have seen this movie. As a Black bibliophile and cinephile this movie taps into two lanes. A movie which is a direct satirical attack on institutionalized racism in the book publishing industry. It is also the story of a man from an upper-middle class New England family that has just about fallen-apart as he tries to get another lease on life and career.

American Fiction (2023) (and the novel it is based on) really hits at how white liberals are gate-keeping the depictions of African-Americans in contemporary literature (and cinema) and the harm that it does when we don't get to showcase the diversity of our stories. Parallel, or in the micro, our protagonist Thelonious "Monk" Ellison is a Black novelist who does not write about contemporary Black pathologies aka "hood" literature, but more intellectual, high-art and bourgie novels. He comes from a prosperous Black New England family that has grown apart and in-decline. And then things grow worse—leading to him making choices that help his career, but betrays his morals and ethics (but again—makes him a lot of money). This movie takes a quietly cynical, but clear-eyed and satirical look at some very down-to-earth realities that people deal with and it does not give any of the characters—save two—a truly happy ending.

All of the main and supporting cast are excellent! Jeffery Wright, Tracee Ellis Ross, and Sterling K. Brown play the three siblings at the heart of the story flawlessly. Erika Alexander was the perfect love interest who was too good for Monk (and lawd—this woman is still as beautiful as she was on Living Single). I felt like Issa Rae was born to play her character similar to the character Beyoncé played in Dreamgirls (2006). Leslie Uggams seems to have moved into the character roles that Diahann Carroll used to play in her later years. This was a good film from Cord Jefferson and I am curious to see what he does next.

My Review of The Great Dictator (1940) directed by Charlie Chaplin

 The Great Dictator (1940) was marketed as the first post-Tramp movie of Charlie Chaplin after he assured people retired the character after the release of Modern Times (1936), but in-fact this film would be the last appearance of the character as who would end-up playing a nameless Jewish barber with amnesia in fake-Germany and strike an obvious resemblance the other role Chaplin plays as the villain antagonist fake-Adolf Hitler. The protagonist and antagonist never meet, but their resemblance is crucial to the film's ending-climax and it's commentary on World War II up to that point in 1940.

This film is famous for (among other things) being Chaplin's first talking movie—and he has a lot to talk about about. As his home country was being pummeled by the Germans and France had already fallen to the Nazis, he watched the USA be neutral for the most part, to some being vocally supportive of the Nazis at worst. Leftist that he was, Chaplin used his physical and rhetorical talents to try and convince American audiences that they needed to oppose fascism. Chaplin's physical set-pieces like the globe sequence (my personal favorite) and the barbershop scenes shows that his comedy and art could still translate to sound-era comedy. I think the witty dialogue also showed his British wit was not lacking. Also, I think everyone knew what to expect of mocking Hitler's infamous speech patterns. Of course, where trouble starts is when he stops going for comedy and gets serious. You can tell how raw his emotions were and how desperate he was to rally Americans to support the War-effort or have the War end entirely. This makes some scenes when Chaplin filibusters and just writes what he feels seem clunky to us today. But when it comes to the ending speech, it is the filibuster that the rest of the movie depends on and is necessary and evergreen in its message,

The film was made only a year after Germany invades Poland and the Holocaust had not officially-begun. This was still post-Nuremburg Laws (laws that were modeled after the USA's Jim Crow Laws) and Kristallnacht, so people knew of the the discrimination and repression of Jewish people in Germany (and how much it resembled the discrimination and repression of African-Americans in the United States). I wonder if Chaplin really thought a country as racist (and antisemitic) as the United States  could be convinced to oppose a nation a nation it ideologically-sympathized with. In 2025, I wonder this now.

On a side note: having fake-Mussolini have a New York Italian accent was an inspired choice😆.

My Review of The Rainmaker (1995) directed by Frances Ford Coppola

 This movie is a straight-up courtroom trial drama about a novice lawyer that takes on an insurance fraud case while also helping an old lady draft a will and helping another woman get a divorce from her violently-abusive husband. This is a very good late-Coppola/early-Matt Damon film. I like the details on court procedure that it shows and I agree with the message it has about the legal system.

My Review of My Cousin Vinny (1992) directed by Jonathan Lynn

Marisa Tomei stole the show. This movie, The Rainmaker, and A Guilty Conscience we’re 3 courtroom drama films I watched in 2023 which were really good! One of the rare films where Joe Peschi is the heroic protagonist; this film is a look at aspects of the legal system not usually show on screen.

Some update posting...

 I haven't really been posting movies on the blog since 2022, and I haven't posted movies on Letterboxd since 2023, so I am posting some reviews I had written drafts of in the last two years, but not published yet.

My Review of A Guilty Conscience (2023) directed by Jack Ng Wai-Lun

A Hong Kong jurist named Adrian Lam gets on the wrong side of the hiss boss and decides to found his own law firm and take on a case involving a Hong Kong oligarch family. Adrian gets too cocky and over-his-head and is set-up into losing the case. Years later, he finds evidence that leads to a retrial and one more shot at redemption.

While I won't spoil the film here, this was such a big it because it uses every movie court-room drama trope in the book to commentate on the class divide (and possibly the sentiment concerning recent political events) in Hong Kong. Louise Wong's role as the wrongly-accused was worthy of Ruan Lingyu. Dayo Wong really does his job right as the magistrate turned lawyer. If you liked Witness for the Prosecution or A Time to Kill then you will like this movie. 

My Short Review of The Other Side of Hope (2017) directed by Aki Kaurismäki

Following-up the last Kaurismäki film I watched, La Harve, this is also about the fate of refugees in Europe—but this time in Kaurismäki‘s native homeland of Finland. Though this film is a lot more cynical than La Harve, Kaurismäki‘s idealism about how people should be towards each other ultimately wins out. Both this film and Le Harve harken back to Jean Renoir and the idea of the guy that just steps-up to be someone in need—no questions asked. 

My Review of ...And Life Goes On (1992) directed by Abbas Kiarostami

 This the Iranian New Wave at its peak. When Iranian film-makers decide to go to extremes of blurring fiction and reality in order to tell an honest story rather than a 100% accurate one, you get what Toni Morrison called "the site of memory." How much can you blend reality and fiction together until you gain the ability to almost change reality? On June  21, 1990 the Manjil–Rudbar Earthquake struck northern Iran and killed around 45,000 people. One of the hardest-hit places was the village of Koker where Abbas Kiarostami had filmed his movie Where Is the Friends House?                                         Kiarostami gets his son and immediately makes his way to Koker from Tehran to find Babak Ahmadpour—the boy who starred in WITFH?. The movie is a recounting of this journey.

As the title suggests, the main theme of this movie is that even after apocalyptic devastation, people keep on living. As Kiarostami traveled through the region, he was marked by the resilience of the people even as they were suffering and trying to collect themselves. This film also used a favorite filming method of Kiarostami; while he and his son were portrayed by actors, Kiarostami was always behind the camera interacting directly with people in the film. In doing this, he dares you to classify this as a realist film. The meta-nature of Iranian New Wave films of this era started getting criticized by the Iranian censors and this marked the beginning of Kiarostami's decline in standing with the régime (he never criticized the pre- or post-revolutionary regimes directly, so he was never explicitly banned or went into exile, but after 1999 it became much harder for him to show his films in Iran compared to internationally). 

Abbas Kiarostami always felt that the best films are the ones that look like they made themselves and that is on display here.